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To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14234)	11/18/1997 3:55:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

<What in the world are you talking about here? Which competition? The Amiga folks didn't understand graphical computing? Ever hear of Sun? Evans & sutherland? Xerox? Macintosh? Ever hear of Andrew and M3? X-windows?> No, they didn't!! Where are they now? At the risk of hectoring you, Reg, I will just point out that this stuff was invented at Xerox and perfected at Apple and in many other systems. You think Apple didn't understand the advantage of GUI? That's all their marketing was about in the 1980s. That's why people bought the systems. However, people continued to buy DOS because big companies bought IBM (often, with IBM buying up considerable of their shares to get an armlock on the situation.) An arrangement on which Microsoft got a free ride. And without the many years of easy DOS income, Microsoft would never have survived the many years of mistakes it made in understanding and implementing GUIs (and bad compilers, and their now-defunct hardware products, and etc.) MSFT beat allof these companies to the punch in introducing graphically controlled productivity apps to the masses. Flat out wrong, the opposite of what happened. Amiga and Apple introduced the benefits of cheap GUI productivity apps to the masses in the 1980s, after Xerox invented the technology (which Microsoft finally paid for after all the lawsuits, as I heard it) and sowed the field by promoting the idea in the 1970s. Since you had not yet been born when all this was being created, and they don't teach it in history class, I can understand a bit of confusion on your part. But if bundling is the bit of genius you are referring to, then I assure you that also had been invented a long long time before I was born. Chaz

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14234)	11/18/1997 4:20:00 PM
From: Justin Banks	Respond to of 24154

Reg - No, they didn't!! Where are they now? Well, they've got network transparent windowing systems, without the need for the command line. SGI for one has had the equivalent of the 'active desktop' for years. All MSFT's got is marketing and an unlimited supply of dollars with which to buy/copy/steal other's ideas and fight lawsuits. -justinb

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14234)	11/23/1997 6:56:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>>> No, they didn't!! Where are they now? The biggest advantage of a graphical computing is the uniform interface capabilites and the ability to communicate to the end user a farily complex set of commands with a comparatively simple set of mouse/key strokes. This enables developers to bring mainstream power to the masses. No Unix commands, no DOS commands, just point and click. The only company that took full advantage of this paradigm early on was MSFT. Amiga and Apple were to proprietary, and the same can be said for all of Unix. And MSFT was any less proprietary? MSFT was just as proprietary as any other solution. Moreover it had no other advantages over any of the others (technically, it was inferior to every single alternative), except that it had the MSFT monopoly machine to make it the standard. >>> Graphical computing as in GUI, as opposed to text based computing, as in traditional Unix and DOS. MSFT beat allof these companies to the punch in introducing graphically controlled productivity apps to the masses. Once again, Unix, Mac, and Amiga came out with GUIs that were brought to the masses. And they were technically superior to MSFT products. What's more, it took MSFT a long time to get it right, with Windows 3.1. But they had this luxury because of their monopoly position. So they were not the first to bring these type of products to the masses but simply the most successful in marketshare terms. This success was not due to great technology, innovation, or making something better than others. It is arguable that the success was even due to MSFT marketing. It had more to do with the corporate mindset that was trained on "Big Blue" IBM solutions and would not look outside of IBM. And IBM blew it by giving control of the OS to MSFT. Thus it was MSFT that got the monopoly mantle from IBM.